Paracelsus (ps. of Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim), * 1493 or 1494 (Einsiedeln), † 24 Sep 1541 (Salzburg) 1. Life Paracelsus was the son of the physician Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim and an unnamed bondswoman of Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland. The meaning of the name “Paracelsus”, first attributed in the 1520s, is not certain, but could have arisen through the Latinisation of “Hohenheim”; the sense of “beyond or surpassing Celsus” is unlikely. About 1502 Paracelsus moved with his father to Villach (Carinthia…